THE TEN SCEPTICS IN COUNCIL—No. 3.
BY P.T. RUSSELL.
Christian. Gentlemen; I am happy to meet you again. Be seated. Have you weighed the matter I gave you in our last interview? If you have, I would like to hear your objections, if you have any.
Reason. We think we have some valid objections. First, we are satisfied that your position is unscientific, although it is ingeniously taken. Among scientific men it is conceded that nature reveals her own birth, and declares her creation. Now, if it is true that Nature herself tells the history of her origin, then your idea that God the creator told this, is to us unreasonable, for there is no need of the same story being told to the same auditors by two different parties; so we must regard your position as untrue.
Christian. Are you sure that Nature ever gave the history of her origin, of her birth? do you read it in the book of Nature, or does she tell it vocally?
Reason. Tell it vocally? No! Nature has no power of speech! She wrote the history of her origin upon the pages of her own book, and the eye of the Scientist reads it there.
Christian. Are you certain of this? how was she qualified to do so? Could you write the history of your origin, of your birth, without the aid of some one older than yourself? Did you have the powers of observation in active exercise, watching every movement among the causes that brought you into being? Now, if man could not be an eye-witness to his own origin, upon this planet of ours, was there anything else in nature that could be, and so gave that history, which you know you could not? Is it not possible that you have obtained your intelligence from another source—from what I call the revelation of the Creator? May it not be true that you have thus borrowed your information, and falsely credited it to Nature? If you found it in the book of Nature and read it there, you can tell me on what page it is written? will you do this so that I may read it too?
Reason. Read it there, and on some certain or well-known page! Really, you are very captious. This great truth is on every page; the whole face of Nature declares it; I can not tell you anything about the page.
Christian. There is a German maxim which, translated into English, reads, "The clear is the true." The natural converse of this German proposition is this: The truth of the ambiguous is very doubtful. This leaves your claim in a very suspicious condition, if it does not brand it with falsehood. Again, you say it was written in the book of Nature. By whom was it written? A book can not write itself. Nature, or the material universe, neither did nor could write it, for she has no power of action, inertia being her property. She might be acted upon. I can write upon this sheet, but it can not write upon itself. If it is written upon it is self-evident that a foreign power has done it. So Nature, being the aggregate of everything, can not move without the hand of a foreign power moving her. I suppose you are now ready to ask, "Is it not a scientific truth that matter is eternal?"
Reason. Yes, we are satisfied that matter is uncreated, and hence eternal. The idea that something was made of nothing might do for the dark ages, but it will not stand the test now. The penetrating eye of the scientist has exploded that dream.
Christian. I am glad to hear you speak thus with confidence, and yet the sequel may show that you are the dreamer. Science, falsely so called, has declared matter eternal. True science contradicts this. "None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules, or the identity of their properties, to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural. The quality of each molecule gives it the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent."—Prof. Clark Maxwell, lectures delivered before the British Association, at Bradford, in Nature, vol. 8, p. 441.
Prof. Maxwell is a star of first magnitude among British scientists; he has made a specialty of molecular organizations. No real scholar would dare to risk his standing by disputing the conclusion of Prof. Maxwell. An idea that is shut out by matter of fact discoveries will not be made the basis of an argument by any scholar who has not been taking a "Rip Van Winkle sleep" while the rest of the world has been advancing. The great improvements resulting in the astonishing increase of power has enabled us to closely examine the smallest known particles of matter, molecules. And under the best glasses, these give every possible indication of being a created, or manufactured article.
Thus, the latest and most grand discoveries in this field of science do unequivocally confirm the declaration of Moses in Gen. 2: 3, where, according to the Hebrew in which he wrote, speaking of the creation of all things, he gives us this idea, "Which God created to make." See marginal reading, Gen. 2: 3. Hebrew scholars tell me this is the correct reading. The word, rendered, "and made," is in the infinitive mood, and hence should read, "to make;" also, that the word rendered, "created" is the proper term by which to indicate the producing cause. This, then, is the thought presented by both of our witnesses, i.e., by Moses and science. Moses says God created the material to make globes, or worlds. The material was molecular, and science declares that every molecule gives every possible indication of being manufactured or created. So, true scientific discoveries have so completely vindicated the Mosaic cosmogony that it leaves no chance for any, outside of three classes, to object. For two of these classes I am not writing, viz., the cowardly and the dishonest. To do this would be "casting pearls before swine." But for the ignorant I send this on its mission. Read and digest. In my next I will demonstrate the divine origin of language and religion. Till then, farewell.
INFIDELS IN A LOGICAL TORNADO.
There is nothing but matter. Matter is eternal. Therefore all things are eternal. Does this have the right ring? It must be so if infidel materialism be the true philosophy. And if it is so we are all deceived; for universal conscience, and universal language, are both against it.
If there is anything that is not eternal there was a time when it began to be, it was created in some way, intelligently or by accident. If intelligently, the Bible idea is, and must be correct. If without an intelligence it was not, and could not be by evolution, for creation by evolution could not, and can not be; because that which is not in a thing can not be evolved out of it, unless you can get more out of a thing than there is in it; which is absurd. So evolution is a negation of the doctrine of a creation. And the doctrine that there is nothing but matter, and that matter is eternal, is a denial of creation by intelligence or otherwise. The infidel says, life began to be; for there was a time when there was no life. But they say matter is eternal. And life is not eternal. Therefore life is not matter. Gentlemen, will you get away with this conclusion? The opposite is equally fatal to the materialistic theory. Thus, matter is eternal. There is nothing but matter. Therefore life is eternal. Can you get this conclusion out of, or away from logical deductions?
But infidels say, "Life is a property of certain elements of matter." Very well; can you separate things and their properties? Can you get them so far apart as to hold the one class—things—to be eternal, and the other class—properties—not? Your philosophy of spontaneous generation of life says, Yes, yes, there was a time when it began to be, and it was spontaneously generated, of course it was. Very well; there is nothing but matter. Matter did not begin to be; it is eternal. Life began to be, therefore it is not matter; otherwise it is eternal according to infidel logic, unless you take the position that life is nothing!
Matter is eternal.
That which began to be is not eternal.
Mind began to be;
Therefore, mind is not eternal.
Very well; let's look at it once more.
Matter is eternal; it did not begin to be.
Mind is not eternal; it began to be;
Therefore, mind is not matter.
Where, gentlemen, O where will you place mind? is it also nothing?
That which began to be was created.
Life and mind, both, began to be;
Therefore, life and mind were created.
Question. Were they the effects of an inadequate cause? Inanimate and unintelligent nature would not be an adequate cause. Did these do more than animated intelligence can do? Gentlemen of skeptical proclivities answer.
If so, is this not evolution backwards? Is it not retrogression, or development at the expense of the loss of power to rise to the plane of unintelligent mind and life evolving nature? Do you say, organic life does evolve organic life and mind. From a state of death? Without antecedent life and mind being drawn upon? Come, gentlemen; how is this? You say inanimate Nature produced life and mind without the previous existence of either; can you duplicate that feat with your power? If you can't are you not below the inanimate Nature which did it for the first time? Can inanimate forces do more than living intelligent Nature? Do you say no! Then demonstrate the philosophy of spontaneous generation of life, and show yourself a God.
An effort to produce organic life without antecedent life, or where it is not, is an effort to create organic life. The efforts of unbelievers to produce organic life by spontaneous generation, is an effort to produce organic life where it is not. Therefore the efforts of unbelievers to produce organic life, by spontaneous generation, is an effort to create organic life.
An effort to create organic life where it is not is an effort to rise into the character of a God, and show one's self the equal of God. But why should this effort not be made? If unintelligent dead matter has performed the feat, without wisdom or design, why should it not be performed by living intelligent Nature? Gentlemen, demonstrate your theory. Do you say, we have given up all hope of witnessing its demonstration? Well, well, has any man ever witnessed it? You say no. Then it is not certain knowledge. Science is certain knowledge. Therefore spontaneous generation of life and intelligent being is not science. Now, gentlemen, don't prostitute science at the shrine of your nonsensical guessing any more. Throw your guessing to one side and acknowledge God like wise men, and be no longer foolish.
Do you say life was always in matter? "Then we must conclude that it is in matter in the same sense in which all other corporeal qualities are in bodies, so as to be divisible together with it, and some of it be in every part of the matter." This is ancient Hylozoism.
On the other hand, the "Stoical Atheists supposed there was one life only in the entire mass of matter, after such a manner, as that none of the parts of it by themselves should have any life of their own." Now, according to this Stoical theory, "life is no corporeal quality or form, but an incorporeal substance." There are, really, but two sorts of Atheism which have been in any thing like extensive notice. First, "Such as claim that life is essential to matter, and therefore ingenerable and incorruptible." Second, "Those who claim that life and everything, besides the bare substance of matter, or extended bulk, is merely accidental, generable, or corruptible, rising out of some mixture or modification of matter." Is life, perception and understanding essential to matter, as such? Is senseless matter perfectly wise, without consciousness? Such is Hylozoism, and it is outrageous nonsense. Very few men ever had credulity enough to receive and appropriate it. This form of Atheism was a forlorn and abandoned thing, without form or systemization, for centuries gone by—and it has few—very few—votaries, even now. The second kind of Atheism "is that of a true notion of body, that it is nothing but resisting bulk," associated with atomic physiology, which is an old theory resurrected of late, and displayed anew, with a show of deep philosophy and wisdom. But that mind and understanding itself sprang from senseless nature and chance, as a mere accident, or from the unguided and undirected motions of matter, is also nonsensical, and utterly absurd. Were there infinite atoms in mutual encounters, dashing and striking against each other? Did these atoms, devoid of sense and life, with their reflections and repurcussions, their cohesions, implexions, and entanglements, their scattered dispersions and divulsions, produce life and intelligence? If so, we will call it by the name of chance. Hear this, O, ye scientists, there is but one choice, and that is between God and chance!
The chance theory is that "infinite atoms of various sizes and figures, devoid of life and sense, moving fortuitously from eternity in infinite space, and making successive encounters and various implexions and entanglements with one another, produced first a confused chaos of these omnifarious particles or atoms, which, jumbling together with infinite variety of motions by the tugging of their different and contrary forces, hindered and restricted each other until, by joint conspiracy, they conglomerated into a vortex or vortexes, where, after many convulsions and evolutions, molitions and essays, in which all manner of tricks were tried," without design, "they chanced in length of time to settle into the form and system of things known as earth, air and fire, sun, moon and stars, plants, animals and men;" so that senseless atoms unconsciously moved themselves, although dead as grains of sand, and kept up the motion until, without any living substance underlying, and adequate to produce motion, all things so beautifully arranged sprang into life and being. O, ye stars, what is the magnitude of an infidel's credulity? What is there which he can not believe? It is no longer to be set down that he is a reasonable man. "The fool saith in his heart there is no God." There is a grand relation between the eternal spirit and that eternal substance which lies behind and underneath all that is, and that relation is the relation between the "King Eternal" and that over which he presides and which he controls. So out of nothing nothing comes.
RELIGIOUS HYSTERIA, OR GETTING INSTANTANEOUSLY CONVERTED.
BY GEORGE HERBERT CURTEIS, M.A.,
Late Fellow and Sub-Rector of Exeter College, Principal of the Litchfield Theological College, and Prebendary of Litchfield Cathedral.
I fear it is impossible to deny, that in the early part of the eighteenth century—amid the general coldness, languor, and want of enthusiasm which characterized that effete epoch—"the Church of England, as well as all the dissenting bodies, slumbered and slept." At this epoch, the Puritans were buried, and the Methodists were not born. The Bishop of Litchfield, in a sermon delivered in 1724, said, "The Lord's Day is now the Devil's market day." In Litchfield Cathedral Library is a copy of Dr. Balguy's Sermons, delivered in 1748, containing on the fly-leaf an autograph remark by Bishop Bloomfield. It is in these words, "No Christianity here." It is said of that period of time, by a noted minister of the Church of England, that a dry rationalism had taken possession of the church, and that all the powers of her best intellects were engaged in hot contests with Deists and Unitarians; that an equally dry morality and stoical praise of "Virtue" formed the chief part of the exhortations from the pulpit. It was just in these times that the causes of the reformation of John Wesley sprang into being. Seven biographies of John Wesley have already been written, and the subject seems far from being exhausted even yet. As usual in such cases it is the earlier publications which take the more sober view of his character and history; while those of a later date surround their hero with a halo of extravagant admiration. Alexander Knox, a personal friend of Wesley's, thus writes of him: "How was he competent to form a religious polity so compact, effective and permanent? I can only express my firm conviction that he was totally incapable of preconceiving such a scheme. * * * * That he had uncommon acuteness in fitting expedients to conjunctures is most certain; this, in fact, was his great talent." (Letter appended to Southey's Third Edition, 2, p. 428.) Methodism, at the first, sprang up simply as a revival.
Half a century ago a distinguished Wesleyan wrote as follows: "Though Methodism stands now in a different relation to the establishment than in the days of Mr. Wesley, dissent has never been professed by the body—and for obvious reasons: (1) A separation of a part of the society from the church has not arisen from the principles assumed by the professed Dissenters, and usually made so prominent in their discussions on the subject of establishments. (2) A considerable number of our members are actually in the communion of the Church of England to this day. (3) To leave that communion is not, in any sense, a condition of membership with us." (R. Watson's Observations, p. 156.)
"What may we reasonably believe to be God's design in raising up the preachers called Methodists? Not to form any new sect, but to reform the nation, particularly the church; and to spread scriptural holiness over the land." (Large Minutes of Conference, 1744–89, Qu. 3.) In the same, Qu. 45, we have this answer: "We are not seceders, nor do we bear any resemblance to them. We set out upon quite opposite principles." Southey says: "Wesley had now proposed to himself a clear and determinate object. He hoped to give a new impulse to the Church of England, to awaken its dormant zeal, infuse life into a body where nothing but life was wanting, and lead the way to the performance of duties which the church had scandalously neglected." (Southey's Life, p. 193, ed. Bohn.)
Mr Curties says: "A disastrous period of Wesleyanism opened with John Wesley's voyage to America, in 1735. It was a mission nobly undertaken, at the instance of Dr. Burton, of Corpus College, and of the celebrated mystic, William Law; and its purpose was twofold; first, that of ministering to the settlers in Georgia, and then of evangelizing the neighboring tribes of red Indians. (Southey's Life, p. 47). But its results were far different from those which either Wesley, or those who wished him well, could have anticipated. For not only were his services for the settlers rejected, and his mission to the Indians a failure. (R. Watson's Life, p. 38.) On his voyage out he had fallen in with twenty-six Moravian fellow-passengers, on their way from Germany to settle in Georgia; and they spoilt all. On his as yet unsettled, enthusiastic, self-dissatisfied frame of mind, the spectacle of their confident, tranquil, yet fervid piety, fell like a spark on tinder. He writes, in his journal, now first begun, 'From friends in England I am awhile secluded; but God hath opened me a door into the whole Moravian Church.' Here, Wesley learned, and took in, the doctrines of Peter Bohler, the Moravian, who taught thus: First, when a man has a living faith in Christ, then he is justified. Second, this living faith is always given in a moment. Third, in that moment he has peace with God. Fourth, which he can not have without knowing he has it. Fifth, and being born of God he sinneth not. Sixth, and he can not have this deliverance from sin, without knowing that he has it." (Southey's Life, p. 113.)
Such is the origin of the Methodist tenet "that there is a swift and royal road, not only for some men, but for all men, by which the highest spiritual things may be reached at a bound." Under such an impression John Wesley set about realizing an instantaneous and sensible conversion. If a man under high mental excitement is looking for such a thing to occur, something will take place sooner or later that will answer the expectation. So, on Wednesday, May 24, 1738, about nine o'clock in the evening, at a society's meeting in Aldersgate street, Wesley persuaded himself that he had felt the desired transition and had passed—from what, to what? In the answer to that question lies the whole doctrinal difference between modern Methodism and the Church of England. Stevens, in his history of Methodism 1, 108, says, Methodism owes to Moravianism special obligations: (1) It introduced Wesley into that regenerated spiritual life, the supremacy of which over all ecclesiasticism and dogmatism it was the appointed mission of Methodism to reassert. But a still stranger event occurred in John Wesley's life, which contributed still farther to darken and confuse his teaching at this critical period of his career. He had been carried away by his love of the Moravians so far as to take a long journey, and to visit the headquarters of their communion at Hernhutt, in Saxony. There he had been an honored guest at the retreat which the enthusiast Count Zinzendorf had carved out of his estate for these hunted Bohemian followers of Huss and Wickliff. But he had returned home, after a brief residence among them, as Luther returned from Rome, not a little shaken in his allegiance to their system. Indeed, shortly afterwards he broke from them entirely; set up a sort of English Moravianism of his own, and organized it with "bands" and "class-meetings" on the Moravian model. But his feelings as a churchman revolted against their ultra-spiritualism; repudiated their doctrine that sacraments and outward means were nothing, and protested that a man must do something more than wait, in quietude, until the influx of God's spirit came upon him, and filled, like a rising tide, all the sluices and channels of his soul. But no sooner had this unquiet soul emancipated itself from one foreign influence than it was warped out of its true course by another. German mysticism had done its work on him, and its doctrine of regeneration into God's kingdom by an interior convulsion of the mind had left its mark upon Wesleyanism for all future time. But just as this extravagance seemed likely to subside, and to be absorbed amid the healthier atmosphere of an English churchman's common sense, most unhappily a strong breath of French fanaticism suddenly set across his path, from quite another quarter. And the singular phenomenon now presented itself of an epidemic religious-hysteria commingling with, and emphasizing into lamentable extravagance, all the most dangerous features of the Methodist-Moravian doctrine about the new birth. So wonderfully is all the world connected together! * * * * *
These French "convulsionists," who had, just before this time, brought their curious mental malady with them into England, were refugees from the atrocious dragonnades of Louis the XIV. Maddened by his abominable and relentless persecutions, deprived by his autocratic edicts of all that life held dear, robbed of their children at the sweet age of seven years old, broken on the wheel, hunted among the mountains of the Cevennes, beggared, insulted, tortured, massacred—what wonder that these poor Protestants lost the balance of their mental powers and engendered a hysterical disease? The disease is (I believe), under its strangely mutable forms, well known to medical science, though science has never yet been able to probe all its mysterious depths. Its seat is, apparently, the great nervous ganglia of nutrition, which lie in the center of the body, and whose strange sympathetic action with and upon the brain has led to all the popular notions about the heart and neighboring organs being the seat of various impassioned feelings. Suffice it, however, at present, to observe that the phenomena which this extraordinary and infectious disease presented had sufficed to cheer the faith and animate the ardor of the Calvinists in the Cevennes against Rome.
The Cevennes is a range of mountains in the south of France, divided into N. and S. * * a wild rugged country, and the abode of many Protestants, who here maintained themselves against the persecutions of their enemies. (See Cavalier Jean). Such, in fact, were the causes of the extasies or irregular inspirations; the want of spiritual guides and schools, spoliation, suffering, liability to torture, and constant apprehension of the galley or the gibbet, the minds of these unfortunate creatures became excited. * * *
This religious enthusiasm began in Vivarais, an old territory of France, in Languedoc, on the Rhone, with the dragonnades and the revocation, repeal of an edict, about the year 1686.
A practical proof of the morbific power of the emotions and passions is found in the frequent occurrence of psychopathitis in times when all the elements of social life are in a state of fermentation. In and after revolutions sudden changes of fortune produce a thousand cases of mental disorder.
The very same disease broke out among the Romanists themselves, at Port Royal, in 1729. In the previous century it had thrown whole nunneries near Bordeaux into wild confusion. In the sixteenth century it was known in Italy as the "Dancing Mania," or Tarantism. At the close of the fifteenth century Tarantism had spread beyond the borders of Apulia. * * * The number of those affected by it increased beyond all belief. Inquisitive females joined the throng and caught the disease from the mental poison which they eagerly received through the eye. * * * Foreigners of every color and race were, in like manner, affected by it. Neither youth nor age afforded any protection; so that even old men of ninety threw aside their crutches, and joined the most extravagant dancers. * * * Subordinate nervous attacks were much more frequent during the seventeenth century, than at any former period. (Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, pp. 107–115, Engl. Trans.)
During the Middle Ages it appeared in Germany. It was a convulsion, which in the most extraordinary manner infuriated the human frame; * * * and was propogated by the sight of the sufferers. They continued dancing, for hours together, in wild delirium, until at length they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. They then complained of extreme oppression, and groaned as if in the agonies of death. * * * They were haunted by visions, and some of them afterwards asserted that they had felt as if immersed in a stream of blood, which obliged them to leap so high. George Fox, Journal 1, p. 100: "The word of the Lord came to me again. * * * So I went up and down the streets crying, Woe to the bloody city, Lichfield! And there seemed to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and the market-place appeared like a pool of blood." In Germany it was called St. John's or St. Vitus's dance. And long before its first appearance in that precise form, in 1374, it had, no doubt, been the real secret of the bacchanalian orgies among the Greeks, and of the frantic, dervish-like gestures and cuttings with knives and lancets which we read of among Asiatic races. In our own day and country (thank God) these extraordinary and degrading spectacles are scarcely to be seen.
But the disease still lurks among the superstitious Christians of Tigre in Abyssinia; in Siberia; among the revivalists of Ireland and America; and (in a very mild form), among the ignorant Welsh Methodists,—who are on this account popularly called "Jumpers." Now it so happened that these poor hysterical French refugees had arrived in great numbers in London, and had also visited Bristol, shortly before the critical year 1739,—when the excitable George Whitfield landed from America, and John Wesley returned home from Germany. Men's thoughts were then full of the (so called) "French prophets." A new religious enthusiasm was floating in the atmosphere, and it only needed the impulse of some exciting preaching, and the mental tension which is always produced among expectant and heated crowds, to generate infallibly an outbreak of this unaccountable and infectious malady. Such an occasion soon presented itself. In February, 1739, Whitfield, for the first time, preached in the open air, at Kingswood, near his native place, Bristol, to the wild and lawless colliers of the then Black Country of England. In the May following he persuaded John Wesley to join him there, and to imitate his example. And then, for the first time, religious hysteria began to manifest itself in England. Men and women of all ages fell down in convulsions, and cried aloud for mercy. And honest John Wesley said, "I am persuaded that it is the devil tearing them as they are coming to Christ."—Wesley's Journals.
THINGS HARD TO BELIEVE.
BY D.H. PATTERSON.
"For myself I still live and doubt. You know I can't believe everything. There are so many things hard to believe—I can't see them."
So wrote an honest, intelligent young man, who was standing on the verge of infidelity. Nor is he alone in his doubts. Many persons will not accept the Bible on account of its mysteries or miracles. To doubt seems to be as natural as to believe. Sir Wm. Hamilton says: "Philosophers have been unanimous in making doubt the first step in philosophy." When Paul says, "Prove all things," he tells us doubt a thing until it is tested. To doubt is not necessarily a fault, but to continue in doubt is blameworthy. If we are doubtful about a thing it is our duty as intelligent beings to examine the testimony concerning it, and so end our doubt. But shall we reject a thing because it is hard to believe? If the Bible had nothing in it hard to comprehend we would not be likely to accept it as divine in its origin; because the mind that comprehends a matter is no more limited, in regard to that matter, than the mind that conceived it. Consequently, if we could comprehend everything in the Bible there would be no divinity of infinite attributes about it to contrast with the limited powers of human nature. Its miracles are proof of its divine origin.
If you leave the Bible, to what will you go? Are all things hard to believe in the Bible? Does a man's believing power rest upon flowery beds of ease in the teaching of infidelity? In the so-called realms of free-thought is there nothing hard to believe? Will it no more be said that—
"Not a truth has to art or to science been given,
But brows have ached for it, and souls toiled and striven?"
Rejecting the Bible, you must either accept Deism or Atheism. Deism admits the existence of a God of infinite power and intelligence. A Deist need have no trouble in believing a miracle. The question with him is not, can God work miracles, and thereby reveal himself to man, but has he done it. Reason teaches us that intelligent design characterizes every act of God. Which theory ascribes the more intelligence to God—the Deist's or the Christian's?
It is universally conceded that man has a worshiping nature. This is evinced by the almost universal idolatry of past ages. Would an act of wisdom reveal to man the true object of worship? Man has a conscience which smites him for his wrong doing, and approves him for his well doing. Would wisdom and love tell him what is right? Or would such attributes allow him to remain in ignorance of his duties? Man has a desire for eternal life; would Deity prepare a place of happiness for him and not reveal the fact to him, that he might better prepare for it, and enjoy the hope of it? Man has a desire for the knowledge of his origin, and for a knowledge of the attributes of his God; would an intelligent being create him with these desires and refuse to gratify them?
Surely there are some things in Deism hard to believe. Deism allows that man has in his nature this empty bucket, which is not to be filled during his stay in this world, if it shall ever be! Nor are these all the hard things which Deists ask me to believe. He wishes me to believe that the history of the Nazarene is legendary, that he was a fanatical enthusiast. Some Deists have refused to believe so hard a thing as this.
Yet I am asked to believe, in addition to this, that he, Christ, "has become," as Renan says, "the corner-stone of humanity so entirely, that to tear his name from the world would be to rend it to its foundations." I am asked, also, to believe, with Renan, the prince of Deists, that, "Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; his legend will call forth tears without end; his sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus." I am asked, with this same Renan, to "place the person of Jesus on the highest summit of human grandeur." Is it not hard to believe all this about Jesus, and at the same time believe that he gave to the world a false religion? Truly there are many things hard to believe—"I can't see them!"
I can not believe that "the passion of an hallucinated woman gave to the world a resurrected God." I can not believe that his legend was the fruit of a great, altogether spontaneous conspiracy. A conspiracy implies conspirators; and I can not believe that the apostles were such outrageous fools as to make a conspiracy, and work so zealously in it, and cling so firmly to it, when it promised nothing but stripes, imprisonments, hunger, nakedness, and death. Neither can I believe that these unlearned Galilean fishermen had the ability in themselves to concoct a conspiracy that would, and did, deceive nearly the whole civilized world. Nor can I believe that an ignorant, deluded Nazarene founded a religion that has held the attention of the thoughtful of all ages. He that refuses to believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, along with the claims of the Bible, has many more and greater difficulties in accounting for the existence of Christianity. It is here, and its existence is the greatest miracle man has ever witnessed. To deny its divinity only increases its wonderfulness. We can not have an effect without an adequate cause. It is hard to believe that humanity is an adequate cause of Christianity. For eighteen centuries it has been living and acting; persecuted by enemies without, and torn and betrayed by enemies within; oppressed by government, and corrupted by Popes and priests; shorn of its grandeur and glory by paganism; its spirituality crippled by stripes and animosities; its fervid love and deep piety replaced, to a great extent, by policy; its rites and ceremonies changed by councils; yet, it continues a monumental proof of the divinity of its glorious founder. Rescued from the wreck of the Dark Ages by Luther and others, it commends itself more and more to every reflecting mind as the only living religion of the present and future. Deliver me from the credulity that believes that such a wonderful soul-redeeming institution had its origin in the passion of a crazy woman or the conspiracy of a few ignorant fishermen.
THE RESULT OF IGNORANCE, AS VIEWED FROM THE SKEPTIC'S STANDPOINT.
"A singular forgetfulness is sometimes noticeable in quarters where one would least expect it; that the education of an immature mind, and the prosecution of a scientific inquiry, are two perfectly distinct things; that the former requires faith, the latter skepticism; and that while the former is the work of the church, the latter is the work of individuals. Thus the Duke of Somerset goes to church, and finds an ignorant generation reposed in a paradise of illusions, while its more learned and thoughtful progeny is excruciated with doubt. In vain preachers now exhort to faith. * * * The Protestant oftentimes takes up his open Bible; he wishes to believe; he tries to believe. * * * All these efforts avail nothing." Christian Theology and Modern Skepticism, 1872, p. 144.
"The Duke and the Protestant are simply trying to do two things at once; and, naturally, Professor Huxley is tempted in the same direction." Lay Sermons, p. 21. "But then he is keen enough to suspect some absurdity in the position, and honestly proclaims that the army of liberal thought is, at present, in very loose order; and many a spirited freethinker makes use of his freedom mainly to vent nonsense." Lay Sermons, p. 69.
According to the above quotations, if it is wise to be skeptical, to be ignorant is bliss.
Give me a "paradise of illusions;" let me repose in them; if I am disappointed in the end I shall fare as well as the skeptic, with this difference, that in case there is any hereafter, I shall know that in my ignorance I lived a life of blessedness with reference to the now experienced eternity; while, in case there is no hereafter for us, we shall just be equal. Again I repeat it, let me have the side where I take no risks when viewed from the skeptic's standpoint, and where I can "repose in a paradise of illusions," in preference to the skeptic's excruciating doubt.
But we shall not be disappointed. Neither are we necessarily a generation of immature minds. We are willing as a whole to compare with non-church going people as a whole. And we are further conceded to be the happiest people in the world, unless you can find a people happier than those who "repose in a paradise of mental illusions." Yes! But we shall find in the end that it was neither ignorance nor illusion, but the wisdom of the wise. Let us continue thus, to live.